Good news! We just received confirmation that the Raspberry Pi has passed EMC testing without requiring any hardware modifications.

As you may know, we’ve had periods booked in a testing chamber at Panasonic’s facility in South Wales for the whole week. Jimmy, Craig and Gareth from Gainspeed, our EMC consultants (with assistance from Phil the EMC lab manager, occasional assistance/hampering from Eben and the aid of many Asda sausage sandwiches), have been working into the evenings, and lost their Good Friday holiday to get all the testing finished. There is still a mountain of paperwork for us to sign, and that then has to be looked over by RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell; but that’s a piece of cake compared to what we’ve been doing all week. Given that we’ve had the chamber for the whole week, we’ve used the time to make sure that alongside the CE requirements, the Raspberry Pi also complies with FCC regulations (USA) as well as CTick (Australia) and what we’ve been calling “that Canadian thing”.

The Raspberry Pi had to pass radiated and conducted emissions and immunity tests in a variety of configurations (a single run can take hours), and was subjected to electrostatic discharge (ESD) testing to establish its robustness to being rubbed on a cat. It’s a long process, involving a scary padded room full of blue cones, turntables that rise and fall on demand, and a thing that looks a lot like a television aerial crossed with Cthulhu.

A cute story. Radiated immunity testing involves hitting the Raspberry Pi hard with narrow-band EM radiation, while checking (amongst many other things) that the device is still able to send Ethernet frames to a hub. The first time the team did this, the light on the hub stopped blinking: no frames were making it through. They did it again: still nothing. Finally, they discovered that the hub (which, I should point out, gave every appearance of being CE marked, so it should have been able to get through these tests itself) was being knocked out every time somebody pressed the button. Jimmy used a longer cable, put the hub outside the field, and found that the Raspberry Pi got through its immunity tests with no problems at all.

Finally, there’s small change to the legal gubbins. I know some of you felt like I did about the paragraph in our trademark rules which said that in products and websites, the words “Raspberry Pi” should only be used as an adjective to avoid genericisation – namely that it was a bloody stupid idea. This thing’s called a Raspberry Pi, not a Raspberry Pi computer. We at the Foundation call the computer a Raspberry Pi in conversation. So does everybody we’ve spoken to about it. We don’t abbreviate it to Raspicomp, but to Raspi or RP; none of the mountains of press coverage we’ve had have used Raspberry Pi adjectivally. So we had a chat about it; reminded ourselves that advice we get from our legal team is just that: advice, not binding instruction; and we’ve removed the paragraph from the trademark rules.

Did you have to do the 20V/m test. Also wandering around in the chamber is ab it like having sensory deprivation, there is no audio (and as design EM :) ) reverb.
Last time I was involved with this kind of thing the independent witness wanted to be in the chamber while the test was underway. Funnily enough the site guys told him to politely go forth.. Anyway Congratulations :), now go and relax :)

Congratulations! Can’t wait for the Pi to arrive now everythings together. Thank’s for the exhausting job You did all the years through! Amazed you realy spent the holidays working on the Pi!!!! WOW Great job! Thanks a lot!

Yesbut, now if somebody makes an RasPi clone, they can call it as RasPi even if the quality is not up to par or it’s not 100% compatible. What you should do is say that the computer is a “Pi” and you call yours a Raspberry, but that other people are welcome to make similar computers as long as they don’t use Raspberry.

The only thing is, the whole point of this is to make a very affordable PC. Are there really going to be that many companies trying to undercut it? It doesn’t seem like it would be very worthwhile. Hence, it kinda seems like there’s nothing to be protected from.

That really if excellent news Liz, and thanks must be given to Eben and all the ‘team’ for what must have seemed like a very long week!
I suppose it’s a bit early to ask… but I am going to anyway… would you like to give us your best guess as to when Farnell/Element 14 and RS components will now be able to start shipping out the first batch to the fortunate few?

We’ve discussed that with them, and happily the rules say (and both distributors are happy with this) that for a limited period after certification we can use a sticker or print the CE mark on the packaging instead of silkscreening the PCBs. We’ll be silkscreening the next run, but those with a very early Raspi will have another identifier they can boast about!

Ex-CE-llent news. Many congratulations on a successful outcome. I’m sure that there will have been a collective sigh of relief from everyone that’s heard the news. Best wishes for a well-deserved and relaxing(!) long weekend.

Well done and thanks for your hard work. I guess my earlier comments were really based on my thinking that Part A is just a starting point in the real world. I am also not a lover of EU regulations and laws.

I can’t wait to get my son into coding. I remember typing basic programs into the Vic20 out of a magazine and the buzz not of seeing the program run but of seeing my tweaks have an effect. Really happy memories that you will allow me to pass to my son. You should be hugely proud of what you are making happen.

“I remember typing basic programs into the Vic20 out of a magazine and the buzz not of seeing the program run”. Sorry for the misquote but it made me smile. Yeah, mostly stuff didn’t run when you first typed it but I don’t rememer the “buzz”! :)

I can tell you a story sometime about taking off 60,000 plastic cases for a metallic interior spray paint job. Absolutely no fun whatsoever. As much as we all want the Pi to have a case, we can certainly be glad it doesn’t need a metallic one! Great job, all!

Just to say “Thank you” for all the hard work done by you both, especially at a holiday time and when you should have been taking things slightly easier to recover from your accident and catch your breath after your US holiday. Once again “Thank you”

Whoo! This is awesome. I can’t wait to see these guys start being distributed. All my friends will be like “Whoa, dude! You got a credit card!” and I’ll be “Yeah, sure.” and I will feel that much cooler/geekier.
Take some time off and enjoy your epicry!

Awesome news. Congratulations… and I’m very pleased to read that you did not forget “that Canadian thing” :-)
I also watched Eben’s excellent webinar yesterday, booted up my Puppy Linux USB stick and wrote my first Python program. It brought back many happy memories of writing programs on the BBC Micro. I was also pleased to hear there are plans to have a BBC BASIC port on the RasPi.
BTW, I saw a photo of the composite output with a text editor. Does that deliberately look like MODE 7??

Nah – I think everything just looks like MODE 7 when you shove it down a composite cable. Someone *should* do a font with the appropriate 1/4 pixel additions to give us pretty but low-resolution output to interlaced displays.

Congratulations and a big thank you to all those involved for their hard work :-)
Now the big question is did the cat suffer any ill effects from being Raspberry’d?
Oh dear there’s me using it as a verb…

Were you at Panasonic at Duffryn, Newport? I work the other side of Tredegar House and ran past Panasonic twice in my lunchtimes last week, if only I’d have known I’ve have popped in and you could have used the static from my running tops :-)

Sadly the TV Design centre closed in December 2011. I am 1 of the 8 that remain (from 140). We now have a new name: IDSC (IPTV & DTV Solution Centre). The EMC guys now fall under HAD (Home Appliance Division).

You should of popped up for a chat and a cuppa. As we have all been following the RPi quite closely as it lends itself quite well as a prototype platform for IPTV apps. You could of even used one of our meeting rooms for your webinar! Although my manager probably would of insisted on a sample RPi to complete the deal ;)

Protecting a trademark is done in many ways which we are pretty strict about already, but turning it into a part of speech which it simply *isn’t* is not one of those. (I trained as a lawyer, so happily I’ve a a reasonable amount of understanding around how this works.)

Great news! Congratulations. Glad you guys made it in time to get most of your Easter break and bask in success. Hopefully there is now nothing in the way of Farnell and RS really getting production ramped up to bring down lead times. (I guess component sourcing and factory (ies) capacity is now the limiting factor?)

I have heard that something like a third of all CE and similar compliance markings are actually fraudulent, because the likelyhood of getting caught is so low. Kind of sad that you as a charity wind up having to do the Right Thing when so many don’t even bother.

My understanding is that a lot of the marks that say “CE” actually mean “China Export”. The problem is that you have to self-certify, so unless you’ve got distributors like ours who care about quality and legitimacy, a lot can get swept under the carpet.

I expect that units sold in the USA would also have the distinctive certification mark of that famous orthodontic and safety testing bureau Underbiters Laboratories. Look for the mark on genuine Sorny and Panaphonics televisions.

Oops, what I had meant to suggest was that off-label appliances sneaky-cleverly labelled as CE for “China Export” could well have a rating from Underbiters Laboratories as well. Not saying that about the ‘Pi – that would be churlish indeed. =:^/

Fantastic a month earlier than I was expecting having done CE approval before so could you now import 10,000 units so I can order more than one my projects going to need a couple of hundred in the first year hopefully dependent on me finishing the project in good time Q4 is the dead line anyway good luck in the coming months and lets get Pi ed

Congrats Eben Liz and team for jumping thru yet another hoop successfully! So glad you can stick on those CE stickers and finally ship at last, they will be a badge of honor to first-gen owners. One question – will Farnell accept your results from the lab on the FCC etc portions on the test to allow shipping to the US without further ado, or do you have yet more bureaucratic hoops to jump thru before shipping outside of the EU to America/Canada/Australia/etc?

Very cool that you managed to comply with FCC regulations in just one week, when large companies like Motorola, Samsung and Apple take more than one month- FCC filings are often a way where news about devices are leaked, well in advance of public releases.

Maybe you should extend the charity to create an industry leading turnaround Raspberry Pi Testing service :-) Those trademark lawyers may have been on to something…

Anyway, a question: there was talk of the HDMI having had changes to the parameters for compliance reasons. Does this mean we’ll see updates to the Linux distributions, to include the a new CE-compliant firmware?

There will be a firmware tweak – we were bringing out a new Debian next week anyway, so we’ll roll it up in the reference image so it can be propagated to the other distros too. (Arch have had a new image ready for a couple of weeks, but with Pepedog’s agreement we’re holding off on sticking it on the downloads page until the firmware tweak can be incorporated.)

Mostly I forget about it as long as I’m moderately careful to take stairs one at a time, but because walking about on it on the flat is not painful, about three times a day I accidentally crouch. (Today: putting the shopping in the fridge, picking up a cat, getting a bottle of sake *out* of the fridge.) Then it’s brought right to the top of my mind.

I worked for a military aircraft manufacturer and they have an anechoic chamber big enough to put an entire aircraft in (on stands that allow them to raise and lower the undercarriage during testing too).

We are very, very lucky that we had someone as experienced and as damn good at electrical engineering as Pete to design the original hardware. We’d be looking at terrible delays if the hardware hadn’t passed in its current state; we’re very fortunate that he’s part of the Foundation.

http://flosslinuxblog.blogspot.co.uk/ references this, the change to a formulated trademark policy, and Eben’s video over at Element14 – also some comments about Debian armhf – also on Planet Debian (planet.debian.org)

Congratulations! Looking forward to *finally* getting my Pi. I have been in a few rf testing chambers, and it gets weird after a while seeing walls all around you, but not hearing any echos from those walls.

HOUSTON: “Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You’ve got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”

:D

This is just such outstanding news, and ranks right up there with the proclamation of the Magna Carta, Columbus discovering excellent new beachfront property, and the Wright Brothers figuring out new uses for bicycle parts :) It will be particularly nice to be able to use clear cases unobstructed by mesh or metallic paint. I take it that the Model A boards will go through separate tests … much later.

The cat comment is priceless … I’m sure PETA and the humane societies have been sitting on pins and needles waiting for that news! In addition to the excellent engineering exemplified by passing these test, this is exactly the kind of thing that separates the Foundation’s efforts from the boring corporate stuff we have to put up with day in and day out.

I can’t wait to start testing Pi-finity! on my actual board to verify my ideas for ensuring that the game can only run on the R-Pi. I’ve started prototyping the engine and should have a rough alpha version of the game available about the same time as I and the other first 10,000 Pi-niacs receive their boards … in our stockings at Chistmas, you promise, right? ;)

# The hub failing the RadImm test. Is the lab sure the hub was at fault? The hub is connected to the RP via an ethernet cable (aka an antenna). For this test the ethernet cable can couple noise into the RP board in addition to the router. If the lab changed the length of the cable, they change the frequency the ‘antenna’ is tuned to. Secondly by moving the hub out of the chamber, the routing of the ethernet cable is changed. If the lab just repeated the failing band with this configuration, and declared a pass, well, personally I don’t think that is the correct approach. At a minimum the entire test should have been redone.

# ESD … I’d be interested to know what test points were selected for the test, and if the board was grounded when the discharges were applied. Was the USB connected to a grounded PC?

This comment illustrates one of the reasons that companies like ours are typically reluctant to release information about EMC testing: this sort of Monday morning quarterbacking is *really annoying* when you’ve just lost a week’s sleep making sure tests are done scrupulously. Yes, the entire test was redone, and frankly I have no idea about the precise test points used for a test I wasn’t present for, but I am perfectly confident that it was done absolutely correctly. The reason we hire named independent EMC contractors and a named independent lab to do this stuff is in part so that we can be observed to be doing things by the book.

You have absolutely no justification for calling into question the competence of the test house. First of all, the test house would have to be complete idiots not to be very thorough, knowing that the eyes of so many people around the world were on them. Still, I suppose the internet is full of self appointed experts who know better than those who have been living and breathing a project for months… Anyway, if you’re so concerned about the veracity of the testing I suggest you hire a test chamber for a couple of weeks and conduct your own independent tests. Incidentally, I have no connection with anyone at Rasberry Pi, but I have brought several products to market, including direct involvement with EMC testing. I do wish RPi every success and congratulate them on all of their fine efforts.

“Apologies, wasn’t my intention to anger you. From the information you provided via the cute story, it seemed obvious to blame the hub, but I was pointing out another possibility existed. I can fully understand with the pressures you folks are under to get this approved, this was the last thing you wanted to hear, my bad.”

I didn’t say the test lab were idiots. Simply pointed out another possibility existed which could be overlooked. I’ve worked with many labs over the years, and these things can happen. Not a reflection on anyone’s intelligence, or lack thereof.

“Still, I suppose the internet is full of self appointed experts who know better than those who have been living and breathing a project for months… ”

The lab hasn’t been involved in the project for months. The Foundation has limited EMC test experience and are relying on the lab for this.

“Anyway, if you’re so concerned about the veracity of the testing I suggest you hire a test chamber for a couple of weeks and conduct your own independent tests”

I wouldn’t need to hire a chamber. But it’s not something I want to do.

“Incidentally, I have no connection with anyone at Rasberry Pi, but I have brought several products to market, including direct involvement with EMC testing.”

Sorry, but why would a professional test lab, contracted to do this testing to a specific standard, overlook something as blatantly obvious as this?. That’s the bit I don’t understand.
I believe to do full CE checking you need to use a chamber – I’m not sure there is an alternative if you want to do it properly.
I think I call concern trolling.

I brought up the point originally on the RI anomaly, because it wasn’t clear enough from the “cute story” to determined the hub was at fault, at least to me. Liz clarified in response, fair enough. Closed.

The rest of my replies have been to folks, such as yourself, telling me that questioning this isn’t right, that I don’t know what I’m talking about, profession labs are this and that etc.

Your first question is answered in the post you replied to.

For the 2nd, there are alternatives to chamber testing, which are allowed for CE compliance. Read up on “in-situ” testing, although personally I wouldn’t want to be around for that one while immunity is going on, and I don’t think it could be justified for the RP given its size.

However, to be clear, what I said was I wouldn’t need to hire a chamber, not that I wouldn’t test in a chamber :) There is a difference. But again, that won’t happen. I’ve no interest in repeating the test.

I’d never heard of the expression, “concerned trolling”, learn something new everyday. But that’s not what this was.

I have some serious concerns about how independent the cat was during this testing. This was presumably a Welsh cat but how certain is the foundation that a Scottish cat or maybe even a bilingual one from Canada would also pass the test? Is the foundation aware of ISO 34001 concerning the standardisation of cats worldwide? You make no mention of the cat complying with this standard and as such I question the validity of the tests. ;-)

Presumably you’re talking about the fifth cat (ie cat number 5 or just cat 5)? While I share you concerns about compliance, surely we should be asking what happened to cats 1, 2, 3 and 4? Also, slightly suspicious that the chamber was previously used by a Mr Schrodinger…

This is great news! I was just wondering whether you the Raspberry Pi is RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) compliant or not? I imagine there might be some issues if you wanted to use this in schools and it wasn’t compliant.

We have been very careful to make sure that it’s RoHS compliant all the way through development. Farnell and RS will be whacking a couple of Raspis with hammers and testing what dust results next week as part of the proper filing of RoHS paperwork, but at this stage it’s a formality.

Apologies, wasn’t my intention to anger you. From the information you provided via the cute story, it seemed obvious to blame the hub, but I was pointing out another possibility existed. I can fully understand with the pressures you folks are under to get this approved, this was the last thing you wanted to hear, my bad.

The EMC standards, while detailed, still have a number of grey areas, which could be open to interpretation. The selection of ESD test points is one such grey area. My question was based on an engineering curiosity, to see what was selected.

The reason you hired a named independent lab was because the lab is accredited. You need accreditation to generate the EMC reports you need to apply for the CE mark.

From the content in the original post I assumed you guys didn’t have your own internal chambers and other relevant equipment.

By the way, the accountability doesn’t reside with the lab. It resides with the manufacturer. The lab will document that the samples they tested (and only those samples) comply. If something goes wrong, the product is audited later and fails to comply, the lab won’t be the one worrying :)

I’ve yet to come across a fully paper based (no test) technical file. The only time I’ve seen non lab testing (but testing none the less) was when the product was physically too large to be tested in the chamber. You could perform an in-situ test, say on the factory floor, and document the results.

The reason the Foundation named the lab was so that no one could claim that they had gone to some fly-by-night outfit who rubber stamped the RasPi for a few quid. They didn’t have to name the lab or give any details. I have no idea, for example, where my phone or Xbox or toaster were tested, but I would never dream of writing to HTC or Microsoft or Breville to question the technical ability and integrity of their contractors, or to tell them that there were a number of grey areas, which could be open to interpretation. It would be presumptious and, to be honest, a bit odd ;)

The Foundation have made a rod for their own back by being honest and open. It would be much easier to say, “Testing is done, it passed with flying colours! More news soon.” But the glasnost thing is part of their ethos and part of what makes them extraordinary.

Quote “By the way, the accountability doesn’t reside with the lab. It resides with the manufacturer”
Just on this point it ultimately resides with the “legal entity” in the country where sold, this can be the manufacturer, first importer or reseller. The CE marking is a “presumption of conformity” and self declaration is permitted, in theory it is possible without any testing using the TCF route but this is a very risky strategy and especially so if the business involved is a large and well established one such as RS or Farnell. To request an independent assessment was part of the due diligence process. There is further assessment underway for compliance with RoHS and REACH Article 33 and other Global compliance requirements commencing with EU, US, Canada and Australia. This is the “taking apart with hammers” that Liz is referring to !

How come it needed ESD? It is a product at a board assembly level and not in a box! It should be handled with care (i.e. ESD care) by consumer . You cannot protect IC pins since they are exposed! If you use Human Body Model and a 10kV I bet you can easily kill the board! What voltage levels they used and at what points they zapped the ESD gun? Thanks.

Great job on the CE marking. Now did you have to test to Class A or Class B (commercial and industrial respectively)? If the RaspPi is a dev board then industrial is fine but if it is a publicly available product it needs to pass the more stringent commercial category?

It doesn’t however answer the question of the sellers responsibility to sell into the approved environment.
My guess is that 95% of R-Pis will be going into a residential environment, even from the initial batch(es), thereby requiring Class B certification OR an approved enclosure.

So, will RS & Farnell now cancel non-industrial orders for the initial offering or add a disclaimer to the product supply?

From RS today: The first boards have passed emission testing to Class A standard and comply with the requirements of the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) directive EN50081-2 (1993) for the use of information technology equipment (ITE) in industrial or office environments. Equipment used in a residential environment may be susceptible to radio interference and to ensure that Raspberry Pi customers are fully aware of this, each of the boards will be supplied with a warning statement in accordance with EMC regulations.http://www.electrocomponents.com/media/press-releases/2012/04/10th/

Unfortunately if the R-PI needs a shielded enclosure to reach commercial (class B) certification, it means that (with the current PCB) the promised transparent case is impossible.
Hopefully s small PCB redesign will fix that problem.

Liz said “Happily, we’ve found it doesn’t need a shielded enclosure to reach Class B, although it will require a (very minimal) redesign.”
So I assume the next batch (made by Farnell, and RS) already will have this very small redesign (I assume perhaps a few ferrite beads in the power cable or something like that). So only this first batch will be class A certified, and the rest will be class B.
That is appropriate, as the first batch was never meant for consumers, but for developers.

Jason said “I don’t see EN50081-2 in the Official Journal, so I believe it can no longer be used.”
AFAIK (the actual language is so complicated that only EMC lab experts know all the details) the difference between the older EN50081-2 standard, and the newer standards that replace EN50081-2 are purely textual, the actual limit lines (the limits in dBM at a certain frequency) did not change, so if the device is certified for EN50081-2 it is automatically certified for the newer set of (subdivided) standards.

Unfortunately, the textual changes are the killers :) And they do matter. The devils in the details.

For example, the standard listed by RS, EN50081-2 (1993), while I’m not over familiar with it, I don’t believe the EU had EMC emissions requirements above 1GHz in 1993. EN55022 didn’t add them until 2007.

From the pictures Liz posted, emissions testing above 1GHz was performed, in a chamber with absorbers on the floor. I’m sure the lab are testing to EN55022:2006+A1:2007, or EN55022:2010 given that configuration (although it could have been only for FCC testing to ANSI C63.4:2009).

Another difference would be the telecom port conducted emissions test. Wasn’t around in 1993.

So, if the device was only certified to EN50081-2:1993, we cannot do a paper based change to EN55022:2006 etc.

I don’t know if RS came up with the reference to this standard, or it came from elsewhere, but ITE equipment require the standards I listed above for the EU. Those are the standards needed on the Declaration of Conformity.

A quote I read before sums this up quite nicely. “The nice thing about standards is there are so many to choose from” :)

did you and Farnell/RS come together and decide that Class A(industrial) was going to be acceptable after all the ruckus about them actually saying its a consumer product?

For any of us in the industry, its obvious given the length of time for testing that it didnt go smoothly (probably HDMI I suspect). As a result I’m not surpised you’ve revised the levels to the easier class A limits.

This was never a consumer product so I’ve glad cooler heads have prevailed

Quite – a week in the testing chamber is *very* speedy, and we were only ever aiming for Class A; RS and Farnell were very clear that the board only has to be certified that far before the educational release. There’s been no “revision to easier limits”, I’m happy to say.

I think you are correct about the HDMI thingy – took a while to track down the problem (overdriven), then knock up a afix. Still, less than a week to do CE, FCC and the Canadian thing. Not too bad given how long each test takes.

Wonderful? Is that it? So if I said, your wonderfully need to buy me a beer, would that work? Lewis Carroll eat your heart out!
Although I would have to add, that I also have no idea what the OP is talking about.

hi guys seeings how popular this little bit of kit is would there be a chance that in the near future there would be a more powerful sister pi also i have registered my interest on the rs web page am i guaranteed to get one and can i chose to have the b version? many thanks

Can you tell me more about the testing setups like frequency band for immunity to radiated RF electromagnetic fields and field strength, test voltage for immunity to electrostatic discharge, burst etc?

Per Liz – “Happily, we’ve found it doesn’t need a shielded enclosure to reach Class B, although it will require a (very minimal) redesign.”

Is this underway? There are a huge number of experienced people who can help make Class B happen. Where can Class A be used? The FCC definition is difficult to pinpoint. My understanding is in a controlled access environment like a server room.